An Outline of Occult Science Part 12

What is pleasurable _should_ rejoice the soul, and sorrow _should_ give it pain, but what the soul is to learn to achieve is control over the expression of joy and sorrow. If that is his aim, the student will become aware that, far from becoming "dull and unsympathetic," he will be growing all the more receptive to the joy and sorrow around him. But it is true that the student will here find that he needs to watch himself carefully for a considerable time to be able to acquire the faculty indicated. He must be careful to see that he partakes of pain and pleasure to the full, yet without so giving himself up to either that he gives involuntary expression to it. It is not justified sorrow that should be suppressed, but the involuntary weeping; not the revulsion against a mean act, but the blind raging in anger; not the precaution against danger, but the senseless "being afraid," etc.

It is only by means of such exercises that the occult student can gain the inner calmness of soul necessary in order that, at the birth of the higher ego, the soul may not find itself as a kind of double, leading a second and unhealthy life alongside of the higher self. It is especially in these matters that we should not yield to self-deception. Some people may be of the opinion that they already possess in everyday life a certain degree of equanimity, and that they therefore stand in no need of such exercises; yet it is especially those who doubly need them. For it is quite possible to remain equable when surveying the things of this life, and then when ascending into the higher world to show evidences of a want of equanimity all the greater because it had only been held in check. For it should be emphatically understood that in the matter of occult training it is not so much a question of what we may already seem to possess, but of carefully and regularly practicing what we need. Contradictory as this phrase may appear, it is nevertheless true that though life may have trained us to this or to that, the qualities to serve us in occult training are those that we have acquired for ourselves. Should life have rendered us excitable, we must train ourselves to conquering this trait; yet if life has engendered in us equanimity, we should so rouse ourselves by our own efforts that the soul may be capable of responding to the impressions it receives. The man who cannot laugh at anything, has just as little control over his laughter as one who is perpetually giving way to uncontrolled laughter.

Thought and feeling may be cultivated by yet another means, namely, by the acquirement of the characteristic known as positiveness. There is a beautiful legend in which it is related of Christ Jesus, that He, with others, pa.s.sed the dead body of a dog. The others turned aside from the hideous sight, but Christ Jesus spoke admiringly of the creature's beautiful teeth. One can, through practice, attain to the condition of mind in regard to the world, which is indicated in this legend. Error, vice, and ugliness should not deter the soul from seeing truth, goodness, and beauty, wherever they are to be found. Nor is this positiveness to be mistaken for want of judgment, or for deliberately closing the eyes to what is bad, false, and inferior. He who can admire the beautiful teeth of a decaying animal can also see that decaying corpse-yet the corpse does not hinder his observing the beauty of the teeth. Thus, though what is bad cannot be deemed good, nor error acclaimed as truth, we can yet train ourselves so that what is bad need not prevent us from recognizing what is good, nor need errors render us insensible to that which is true.

Thought, combined with will, attains to a certain maturity if we strive never to allow what we have already experienced or learned to rob us of our unbiased receptiveness for new experiences. Such a thought as: "I have never heard that before; I don't believe it!" should lose all significance where the occult student is concerned; indeed, he should endeavour, for a fixed period of time, to allow every thing and every creature to convey something new to his mind. Every breath of air, every leaf on the tree, the prattling of a child,-each and all will teach him something, provided he be willing to bring a different point of view to bear upon it from the one he has. .h.i.therto held.

It may, of course, be possible to go too far in this particular, and we must not at any time lose sight of the experiences we have previously had.

Indeed, what we experience in the present should be judged in accordance with the sum of our past experiences. These must be laid on one side of the scale, while on the other the occult student should place an inclination for ever gathering new knowledge. Above all, a belief in the possibility that new experiences may contradict the old.

Thus we have enumerated those five qualities of the soul which the occult student in regular training, should acquire; control of the trend of his thoughts; control of the impulses of his will; equanimity in sorrow and joy; positiveness in his judgment of the world; and impartiality in his view of life. After giving consecutive periods of time to the acquiring of these qualities through continued practice, the student must go still further, and bring all these qualities into a harmonious whole within the soul, to achieve which, he will have to practice the exercises in twos and twos together, or three and one, simultaneously, so as to bring about the harmony desired.

The exercises indicated above are thus given out by occult teaching because if faithfully carried out, they not only produce in the occult student what we have called above direct results, but they lead indirectly to much else that is needed on the path to the higher worlds. He who practices these exercises sufficiently will, while doing so, become aware of many a lack and many a failing in his own soul-life, and he will at the same time find in them the very means necessary to give strength and security to the intellect, to the emotional tendencies and to the character as well. He will a.s.suredly need many additional exercises, according to his capacities, temperament, and character; these, however, will present themselves if the above be frequently carried out. Indeed, one will notice that the already indicated exercises, indirectly, gradually yield that which at first does not seem to be in them. A person endowed with but little self-confidence, for instance, finds in the course of time, that by persistent practice the needed confidence in himself has come about. And it is the same with many other soul qualities.(28)

It is a matter of significance that the occult student is capable of raising these capabilities to ever higher degrees; and he must succeed in so controlling his thoughts and feelings that the soul will have power to maintain complete inner quietude for certain periods of time-periods during which he can keep out of his mind and heart all those things that in any way concern the outer everyday life, its joys and sorrows, its pleasures and cares, even its tasks and demands. At such a time nothing should be allowed entrance into the soul except what the soul itself admits. An abjection may easily be made to this. One might imagine that alienation must result if the student withdraws in heart and spirit from life and its duties for a certain part of the day. Yet in reality, this is by no means the case. For those who, in the above manner, give themselves up to periods of inner quietude and peace will find that out of these there grows such a fund of energy for fulfilling the outer duties of life that they are not only not less efficiently performed, but a.s.suredly more so.

It is of great benefit at such times to detach oneself entirely from thoughts of personal affairs, and to be able to raise oneself to that which affects not oneself alone, but all mankind. If he is then able to fill his soul with messages from a higher spiritual world, and if they have the power of enthralling his soul to as intense a degree as any personal concern or care, then indeed will his soul have gathered fruit of especial value.

Those who thus exert themselves to regulate their soul-life will arrive at the possibility of a degree of self-observation that will permit them to review their personal affairs with the same tranquillity as those of others. Seeing one's own experiences and one's own joys and sorrows in the light in which those of another appear, is a good preparation for occult training. We bring this exercise gradually to the necessary stage, if, after the day's work is over, we allow the pictures of the day's occurrences to pa.s.s before the mind's eye. We would then see ourselves within our own experiences as in a picture; in other words, we would look at ourselves in our daily life, as an outside observer.

A certain practice in self-observation having been gained by concentrating the attention upon short divisions of the day's experience, the student will become more and more expert in this kind of retrospect, continued practice enabling him to review the events of the whole day completely and quickly. It will become ever more and more the ideal of the occult student to a.s.sume such an att.i.tude with regard to the events of life which confront him that he will be able to await their approach with absolute calm and inner confidence, no longer judging them by the state of his own soul but according to their own inner meaning and inner worth. And it is by looking to this ideal that he will create a condition of soul that will enable him to meditate profoundly, as described above, upon symbolical and other thoughts and feelings.

The conditions here described must be fulfilled, because supersensible experience is built upon the foundation on which the student stands in his ordinary soul-life, before he enters the supersensible world. In a two-fold way, all supersensible experience is dependent upon the soul's point of departure before entering that world. One who is not intent, from the outset, on making sound powers of judgment the foundation of his spiritual training will develop supersensible capacities which perceive the spiritual world inaccurately and incorrectly. To a certain extent his spiritual organs of perception will develop in the wrong way. And just as a man with a defective or diseased eye cannot see correctly in the sense-world, so it is not possible to have true perceptions with spiritual organs which are not built upon the foundation of sound powers of judgment. One who starts from an immoral state of soul rises into the spiritual worlds with his spiritual vision stupified and clouded. In regard to supersensible worlds he is like a person in the sense-world who makes observations in a state of lethargy. The latter, however, will not be able to make any statements of consequence, whereas the spiritual observer, even in his stupefaction, is more awake than a person in the ordinary state of consciousness, and the results of his observations will therefore be erroneous in regard to the spiritual world.

The highest possibilities of imaginative cognition can be realized by supporting the aforesaid meditations by that which one might call "sense-free" thinking. Now when we formulate an idea based upon observations made in the physical sense-world, our thought is not free from sense-impressions. Yet it is not as though man could formulate only such ideas: human thought need not become void and meaningless simply because it is not filled with observations derived through the channels of the senses. The most direct and the safest way for the occult student to acquire this "sense-free" thinking, is to make the facts of the higher worlds presented by occult science, the subject of his thoughts. These facts cannot be observed by means of the physical senses; nevertheless, the student will find that he will be able to grasp them-if only he has enough patience and perseverance. No one can explore higher worlds, or make his own observations therein, without having been trained. But it is quite possible without training to understand everything which investigators communicate about those regions. Should anyone ask, "How can I accept on trust what the occultist tells me, being myself as yet unable to see it?"-such an objection would be groundless, for it is perfectly possible to arrive through mere reflective thinking at the sure conviction that the matters thus communicated are true.

If a man is unable, through reflecting, to arrive at such a conviction, the reason is not that he cannot possibly "believe" something he cannot see, but simply because he has not as yet applied his powers of reflective thinking in a sufficiently unbiased, comprehensive and profound manner.

In order to be clear on this point, it must be borne in mind that human thought, if it arouses itself to energetic activity, can understand more than it usually imagines possible. For in thought there is an inner essence which is in connection with the supersensible world. The soul is not usually conscious of this connection, because it is wont to train its faculty of thought only through the world of sense. On this account it thinks incomprehensible what is imparted to it from the supersensible world. What is thus communicated is, however, not only intelligible to thought which has been spiritually trained, but to any thinking which is fully conscious of its power and is willing to make use of it.

By the persevering a.s.similation of what occult teachers are able to impart to us we habituate ourselves to a line of thought that is not derived from sense-observation, and we learn to recognize how, within the soul, one thought is allied to another, and how one thought calls forth another, even when the connection of ideas is not occasioned by any power of sense-observation. The essential point is that by this method we become aware of the fact that the world of thought possesses an inner life, and that while we are engaged in thought we are, indeed, in the realm of a supersensible living power. Thus we may say to ourselves: "There is something within me that develops an organism of thought; nevertheless, I am one with this something." And thus in yielding to this sense-free thinking, we experience something like a being, which flows into our inner life, just as the qualities of the things of the senses flow into us through our physical organs when used for sense-observation.

"Out there in s.p.a.ce," says the observer of the sense-world, "is a rose: it is not unfamiliar to me, for both scent and colour proclaim its presence."

And in like manner, when sense-free thought is working within us, we need only be sufficiently unbiased in order to be able to say: "Something real proclaims its presence to me, linking thought to thought and const.i.tuting a thought-organism"-only there is a difference to be noted between the communication coming to the observer from the outer world of the senses, and that which actually reaches the sense-free thinker. The former feels that he is standing without-in front of the rose-whereas he who has given himself up to thinking which is untrammelled by the senses will feel _within himself_ whatever thus proclaims its presence to him; he will feel himself one with it.

Those who, more or less, unconsciously consider as beings only that which they can perceive as external objects, will, it is true, be unable to entertain the feeling that whatever has the nature of a being, can also manifest itself within man by his becoming one with it. In order to judge correctly one must be able to have the following inner experiences: one must learn to distinguish between the thought combinations created through one's own volition, and those experienced without any voluntary exercise of the will. In the latter case, we may then say: I remain quite still within myself; I produce no trains of thought; I yield to that which "thinks within me." Then we are fully justified in saying: Within me a being is acting, just as we are justified in saying that the rose acts upon us when we see a certain red, when we perceive a certain odor.

Nor is there any contradiction in having derived the contents of our ideas from communications made by the occult seer. The ideas are, it is true already there when we devote ourselves to them; yet they cannot be "thought", without in each case being created anew within the soul. The important point is that the occult teacher seeks to awaken in his hearers and readers the kind of thoughts which they must first call forth from within themselves, whereas he who describes some physical object indicates something that the listener or reader may observe within the sense-world.

(The path which leads to sense-free thinking by means of the communications made by occult science is thoroughly safe. But there is also another method even safer and above all things more exact, yet for this very reason more difficult for the majority. This method is set forth in my two books, "_Goethe's Conception of the World_" and "_The __ Philosophy of Spiritual Activity_." These writings set forth what human thought can achieve for itself, if the thinking is not under the influence of the physical sense impressions but relies merely upon itself. Then pure thinking works within man like a living being. At the same time nothing in the above-mentioned writings is derived from communications due to occult science itself, and yet it is shown that pure, self-reliant thinking can obtain information about the world, life and man.

These writings therefore occupy a very important intermediate position between the actual cognition of the sense-world and that of the spiritual world. They present that which thinking can gain when it raises itself above sense-observation and yet does not enter into occult research.

Anyone who allows these books to work upon his whole soul, already stands within the spiritual world, but it appears to him as a world of thought.

Those who are in a position to allow this intermediate condition to act upon them, will be following a safe and sane path and can thus win for themselves a feeling concerning the higher worlds, which will for all future time ensure for them most abundant results.)

The object of meditating upon the above described symbolical concepts and feelings is, strictly speaking, the development of the higher organs of cognition within man's astral body. They are in the first place created from the substance of the astral body. These new organs of observation establish a connection with a new world wherein man learns to know himself as a new ego.

These new organs of perception are first of all to be distinguished from those of the physical sense-world by being _active_ organs. Whereas the eye and ear are pa.s.sive, allowing light and sound to work upon them, it may be said of these perceptive organs of the soul and spirit that, while functioning they are in a perpetual state of activity, and that they seize hold of their objects and facts, as it were, in full consciousness. This gives rise to the feeling that psycho-spiritual cognition is a union with,-a "dwelling within,"-the corresponding facts.

These separately evolving psycho-spiritual organs may be compared to "lotus flowers" corresponding to the appearance which they present to the clairvoyant consciousness, as they are formed from the substance of the astral body.(29)

Very definite kinds of meditation act upon the astral body in such manner that certain psycho-spiritual organs, the so-called "lotus flowers," are developed. Any proper meditation undertaken with the view of attaining to imaginative cognition has its effect upon one or another of these organs.(30)

A regular course of training arranges and orders the separate exercises to be practised by the occult student, so that these organs may either simultaneously or consecutively attain their suitable development, and on this process the student will have to bring much patience and perseverance to bear. Those, indeed, who are possessed of no more than the average amount of patience with which man, under ordinary conditions of life is endowed, will not reach very far. For it takes a long-often a very long time indeed-before these organs have reached a point at which the occult student is able to use them for observing things in the higher worlds. At this point comes what is known as "illumination," in contradistinction to the "preparation," or "purification," which consists in the practices undertaken for the formation of these organs. (The term "purification" is used because in order to reach certain phases of inner life, the pupil cleanses himself through the corresponding exercises, of that which belongs to the world of sense observation.)

It is, however, quite possible that before actual illumination, the student may get repeated "flashes of light" from a higher world. These he should receive gratefully. Even these can make him a witness of the spiritual realms. Yet he must not falter should this never be vouchsafed him during his entire period of preparation, and should its consequent duration seem all too long to him. Indeed, those who yield to impatience "because they can as yet see nothing," have not yet acquired the right att.i.tude toward the higher worlds. Those alone will be in a position to grasp this who can view the exercises they undertake as an object in themselves. For this practice is in truth a working on something psycho-spiritual, namely, on their own astral body; even though they do not "see," they can "feel" that they are working on the psycho-spiritual plane. Only when we have a preconceived idea of what we "wish to see," are we unable to experience this feeling. In that case we may consider as nothing what is, in reality, of immeasurable importance. But one should observe minutely everything which one experiences while practicing,-experiences which are so fundamentally different from those of the sense-world. We shall then become aware that we cannot work upon our astral body as though it were some indifferent substance; but that in it there lives a totally different world of which the life of our senses does not inform us.

Higher ent.i.ties act upon the astral body in the same way in which the world of the physical senses acts upon the physical body, and we "come upon" that higher life in our own astral body, provided only we do not shut ourselves out from it. If we are perpetually saying: "I am aware of nothing," then it is generally the case that we imagined that these experiences should appear thus and so; and because we do not see what we imagined we should see, we say, "I can see nothing."

However, he who is able to acquire the right att.i.tude of mind with regard to his practice during training, will find more and more that he has something which he loves for its own sake and which, as an immeasurably important vital function, he can no longer do without. He will then know that through these very practices he is standing in the psycho-spiritual world and will await with patience and resignation what may further transpire. This att.i.tude of mind of the student may best be expressed in such words as these: "I _will_ do all the exercises which have been a.s.signed to me; for I know that in the fullness of time as much will come to me as I should receive; I do not ask for it impatiently, but I prepare myself to receive it." On the other hand one should not raise the objection: The occult student, then, is expected perhaps for a long time to feel around in the dark, because he cannot know that he is on the right path with his exercises, before he obtains results. It is not true, however, that he must wait until the results prove to him the correctness of the exercises. If the att.i.tude of the student is right, then the satisfaction which he experiences in the practice of these exercises, in itself carries the conviction that he is doing the right thing, and he does not need to wait for results to prove it. The correct practice of exercises in occult training brings with it a satisfaction that is not merely satisfaction, but conviction-the conviction that I am doing something which shows me that it is leading me forward in the right direction. Every occult student may have this conviction at any moment if he pays careful attention to his experiences. Should he not exercise such attention, he will simply pa.s.s by these experiences just as a wayfarer in profound thought does not notice the trees alongside of the road, though he would surely see them if he would but direct his attention to them.

It is by no means desirable that results, other than those which are always due to such practice, should in any way be hastened. For such results might easily be only an infinitesimal part of what should really take place. Indeed, in the matter of occult development, partial results are, more often than not, the cause of considerable delay in complete development. Contact with such forms of spiritual life corresponding to partial development, tends to dull the perceptive faculties to the influences of those powers which would lead on to higher stages of development; while the benefit derived from such a "glimpse" of the spiritual world, is after all only a seeming one, because this glimpse cannot divulge the truth, but only deceptive illusions.

The psycho-spiritual organs, the "lotus flowers," shape themselves in such a manner that to clairvoyant consciousness they appear in the vicinity of particular physical organs of the body of the person undergoing training.

From among these psycho-spiritual organs the following should be enumerated: that which is to be perceived between the eye-brows is the so-called two-petalled lotus flower; that in the region of the larynx is the sixteen-petalled lotus; in the region of the heart is to be found the twelve-petalled lotus flower and the fourth is near the navel. Others appear in close conjunction with other parts of the physical body.(31)

The lotus flowers are formed in the astral body, and by the time one or the other has developed, we become conscious of them. We then feel that we can make use of them, and that by doing so we really enter a higher world.

The impressions received of that world still resemble in many respects those of the physical senses; and one with imaginative cognition will be able to designate the new higher world as impressions of heat or cold, perceptions of sound or words, effects of light or color-because it is in this way that he perceives them. He is, however, conscious of the fact that these perceptions express something different in the imaginative world from what they do in the actual sense-world; and he recognizes that behind them lie causes which are not physical, but psycho-spiritual ones.

Should he receive an impression of heat he will not, for instance, attribute this to a piece of hot iron, but will regard it as the emanation of some soul-process, which he has. .h.i.therto experienced only with his soul's inner life. He knows that behind imaginative experiences exist psycho-spiritual things and processes just as behind physical perceptions we have physical ent.i.ties and material facts.

And yet this similarity, apparent between the world of imagination and the physical world, is modified by one important difference. There is something present in the physical world which, when met in the imaginative world, bears quite another appearance. In the former we are aware of a perpetual ebb and flow, an alternation between birth and death. But in the imaginative world there appears, in place of this phenomenon, a continual metamorphosis of the one into the other. In the physical world we see, for instance, how a plant fades away, but in the imaginative world there emerges, in proportion as the plant fades, another form, not physically discernible, into which the withering plant is gradually transformed. When once the plant has faded away completely, this form will have become fully developed in its place. Birth and death are conceptions which lose their value in the imaginative world, making way for a comprehension of the trans.m.u.tation of the one into the other.

This being the case, those truths concerning which we have already made certain communications in an earlier chapter of this book (see Chapter II, "The Nature of Man") become accessible to the imaginative perception.

Physical sense-perception is able to perceive only what takes place in the physical body, processes which are enacted within the "domain of birth and death." The other principles of man's being, namely, the etheric or vital body, the sentient body, and the ego, are subject to the law of trans.m.u.tation, and the perception of them is unlocked by imaginative cognition. Any one who has advanced this far will observe that that which lives on under other conditions of being after death, detaches itself from the physical body.

But development does not come to a standstill within the imaginative world. Anyone who would like to remain stationary in it, would, it is true, be able to note the ent.i.ties in process of trans.m.u.tation, but he would be unable to interpret the meaning of these processes of change. He would not be in a position to find his way about in this newly attained world. For the imaginative world is a realm of unrest-there is naught in it but movement and change; nowhere are there stationary points. Such points of rest are reached only by the person who, having transcended the stage of imaginative knowledge, has attained to that grade of development known to occult science as "understanding through inspiration."

It is not necessary for one seeking knowledge of the supersensible world to develop his capacities so that the imaginative cognition should have been acquired in full measure, before moving on to the stage of "inspiration." His exercises may, indeed, be so regulated that two processes may go on simultaneously, one leading to imagination and the other to inspiration. The student will then in due time enter a higher world, in which he not only perceives, but where he can also find his way about, as it were, and which he becomes able to interpret. Progress, as a rule, consists in the occult student perceiving some apparitions of the imaginative world and becoming conscious, after a while, that he is beginning to get his bearings.

Yet the world of inspiration is something quite new compared with the purely imaginative realm. By means of the latter we learn to know the transformation of one process into another; while through the former we come to recognize the inner qualities of ever changing beings. Imagination shows us the soul-expression of such beings; through inspiration we penetrate into their spiritual core. Above all, we become aware of a multiplicity of spiritual beings and of their relation to one another. In the physical sense-world we have also, of course, to do with a multiplicity of different beings, yet in the world of inspiration this multiplicity is of a different character. In that world each being sustains quite definite relations to all the other beings, not, however, as in the physical world through outer influence upon them, but through their essential inner nature.

When we become aware of a being in the world of inspiration, no external impression made upon another is apparent, such as might be compared with the influence of one physical being upon another; a relation nevertheless exists which is purely the result of the inner const.i.tution of the two beings. This relations.h.i.+p may be compared with that in which the separate sounds or letters of a word stand to one another in the physical world. If we take the word "man," the impression made is due to a consonance of the letters, m-a-n. There is no impact nor other outer influence pa.s.sing from the "m" to the "a," but both letters sound together within "a whole,"

owing to their very nature. This is why observations made in the world of inspirations can only be compared to reading and the observer sees the beings of this world like written characters which he must learn and whose inner relations must reveal themselves to him like a supersensible writing. Therefore occult science can call cognition through inspiration, figuratively, the "reading of the secret script." How one may read by this "secret script" and how one can communicate what has thus been read will now be made clear by reference to previous chapters in this book. Man's being was first described as composed of different principles. It was then further shown how the cosmos in which man is developing, pa.s.ses through various conditions; those of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth. The perception by means of which we are able on the one hand to discern the principles of the human being, and, on the other, the successive states of the Earth and its previous transformations, is revealed to the imaginative cognition.

But it is now further necessary that the relations existing between the Saturn state and man's physical body; between the Sun state and the etheric body, etc., be understood. It must be shown that even during the Saturn state the germ of man's physical body came into existence, and that it has then further developed to its present form during the Sun, Moon, and Earth periods.

It had to be shown for example, what changes took place in the human being owing to the separation of the sun from the earth, and also that something similar again took place in connection with the moon. We had, moreover, to make plain what contributed to the bringing about of such changes in mankind as those which took place in the Atlantean era, how they were manifested in the successive Indian, ancient Persian, Egyptian, and other periods. The description of this sequence of events is not the result of imaginative perception, but of inspirational cognition derived from the reading of the secret script. For such reading, the imaginative perceptions are like letters, or sounds, although such reading is not alone necessary for interpretations like the above. It would be impossible to comprehend the whole life-process of man by means of imaginative cognition alone. One might possibly be in a position to note how, in the process of dying, the psycho-spiritual principles detach themselves from what remains in the physical world, but it would be impossible to understand the connection between what happens to man after death and the preceding and following stages, were we unable to find our way through the facts obtained by imaginative cognition. Without inspirational knowledge the entire imaginative world would remain mere writing, at which we gaze but which we are unable to read.

As the student proceeds from imagination to inspiration he will soon see how wrong it would be to neglect this understanding of the facts of the universe and limit himself only to those facts which, so to speak, touch his close personal interests. Indeed, those who are not initiated into these matters may be inclined to say: "The only thing that seems of any importance to me is that I should ascertain the fate of the human soul after death. If anyone can give me information upon that subject, it will suffice; but of what use is it for occult science to present to me such remote subjects as the Saturn and Sun states, or the separation of the moon and the sun, etc.?"

Those, however, who have been properly instructed in these things will recognize that a true understanding of what they desire to learn could not be obtained without knowledge of these matters, which appear so unnecessary to them. A delineation of man's states after death would remain utterly incomprehensible and valueless to one who is unable to connect it with ideas derived from those very far-off events. Even the most elementary observations of a clairvoyant necessitate his acquaintance with such things.

When, for example, a plant pa.s.ses from the blossom to a state of fruition, the clairvoyant observes a change in the astral being, which, while the plant is in blossom, has covered and surrounded the blossoming plant from above like a cloud. Had fructification not taken place, this astral being would have been changed into quite a different form from the one it now a.s.sumes in consequence of this fertilization. Now we understand the entire process thus clairvoyantly observed, if we have learned to comprehend our own nature through a knowledge of that great cosmic process, in which the earth and all its inhabitants were involved at the time of the separation from the sun. Before fertilization, the plant is in the same condition as was the whole earth before the sun separated from it. After the fertilization of the blossom, however, the condition of the plant is that of the earth after the separation of the Sun had taken place, while the moon-forces were still active in it.